Marking the directorial feature debut of Lance Oppenheim, the film is a stylized portrait of four residents living within The Villages, struggling to find happiness and meaning in life's final chapters.

[5] Featured personnel in the documentary are credited as themselves: The film initially emerged from director Lance Oppenheim's undergraduate thesis in the Visual and Environmental Studies program at Harvard University, where he collaborated with classmate and co-producer Christian Vazquez.

At Harvard, Oppenheim worked on an earlier version of the film under the tutelage of filmmakers Robb Moss, Ross McElwee, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, and Alfred Guzzetti, which informed the creation of the rest of the project.

[8] Using inspiration from Larry Sultan's Pictures from Home series, Ulrich Seidl, Todd Haynes' Safe, and Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands, Oppenheim and Bolen wanted the film's images to mirror the controlled, manicured and hyperreal landscapes of The Villages.

[9] Oppenheim and composer Ari Balouzian conceived of the score as an "integral part of the story they wanted to tell", embracing a "dreamy, orchestral sounds with harp inflections that invoke Old Hollywood to capture the tension between the sunny, polished exterior of The Villages and its harsher day-to-day realities".

[17] Beandrea July of The Hollywood Reporter echoed similar sentiments, remarking that the film is a "solid feature debut from a bright young filmmaker who, despite his age, is able to expand our understanding of the complicated lives of older Americans".